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C. Value Lists

The value lists provided in this appendix are not definitive and are usually limited to a minimum of five examples if more comprehensive lists are available. If no pre-existing and authoritative lists are available, a non-exhaustive but more comprehensive set of terms is provided.1 The example terms have come from a variety of institutions.

C.1 Manifestation/Item Physical Description

Many of the physical description elements are considered specific to Manifestations and are inherited properties of the Items associated with the Manifestations. This approach is recommended where possible so that the data only need be captured once in order to eliminate redundancies. However, it is understood that many elements may be repeated at the Item level due to systems designs. Therefore, the list of elements below indicates those that can be conceivably recorded at the Manifestation level only, at the Manifestation or Item level, and at the Item level only.

  1. It is recognised that vocabulary lists often require frequent updates, additions or amendments. For this reason, should resources permit, it would be ideal to separate value lists from the rules and locate them in a central, online repository, like metadataregistry.org. RDF-based repositories like this can supply up-to-date vocabularies on demand and have additional advantages over traditional value lists such as those found in this Appendix. ↩